Viewing Public Data
I hate the way U.S. Census data presents itself. You can find almost anything you want related to state or city data, but there are dozens (or hundreds?) of tables to search and filter through. You just need to know how to get there.
Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to looking up available data, the website is fantastic. Demographics, education, economy, even government financials. It’s all there. It just takes a while to find it.
The same can be said for a number of other data repository websites. Plenty of data exists. But there isn’t an equal amount of useful information.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get a nice, concise view for any given municipality across the country? A place where you can easily search and digest that community’s information? And wouldn’t it be even nicer to compare those numbers against peers within the state and outside?
Well now you can!
Introducing Spera Connect Municipal Profiles
Spera Connect brings together the various actors in society and develops good ideas around building social impact. Spera’s new Government Data section builds on this theme by housing individual municipal profiles, each outlining the key demographic, economic and other critical performance metrics.
It includes data from more than 22,000 incorporated municipalities across the United States.
Tables include information on demographics, labor market, education, housing, transportation, social services, industry and, where available, government financials.
There is even a section that relates each municipality’s Human Energy score with its peers. This 3-part equation relates all of a municipal system’s activities to the quality of life for everyone inside it. See the related post here that discusses this concept in more detail.
I hope these kinds of reports can be more easily digested and used in discussions around social policy and investment decisions in your area. Use the local and nationwide comparisons as starting points. Then try to find areas that you can most easily see needing improvement in the near future.
Human Energy System
Nikola Tesla once said the ultimate goal of science should be to solve the problem of “increasing human energy.”
Cities, likewise, could be measured according to their human energy scores. Spera Connect calculates this for you based on the available data. Things like economy, education, and other positive traits serve to accelerate the mass forward. Crime, delinquency, illness, etc. have the opposite impact. The mass (or population) of any municipality is thus moving forward according to these forces.
Investment Calculator
Human energy, however, is a largely wasted idea if not practically applied.
The bottom of each Municipal Profile contains an investment calculator. It helps determine where dollars could most effectively be used to increase your city’s “human energy.”
Use the slider to select from a range of dollar values and the drop-down to select from among a group of investment areas.
See the projected impact on your city, which comes in two forms:
- Reduced social spend
- Increased property tax income
(Note: This feature is limited to Arts, Education, Employment, Environment, Housing and Youth Development, in its initial launch. But this list will grow as more data is compiled in Spera’s Human Energy database.)
Do you need help attracting funding for your nonprofit or social service program?
Use this Excel financial model to select from a list of social impact areas and model out investments in your city. Select from the universe of American municipalities, with official social, financial, and economic data from 2017 Census.
Choose an investment amount and time horizon and see how your program benefits the city in terms of:
1. Social service spending reductions
2. Property tax income increases
Nothing in this file is locked. Please use it at your convenience and modify, update, change as necessary. I hope this helps you fund ideas, attract investment and improve your community!
Live Updates
You can play around with a number of different scenarios, as the calculator updates live. Hard and fast financial projections are difficult to come by because impact is largely based on statistical probability models. But this calculator provides a starting point for identifying areas that a city should focus its social service investment on.
You’ll find that some areas have diminishing returns on investment. You won’t get the same 10% annual ROI at $1 million as you will at $25 million. This just means that the underlying data model for a given investment area typically doesn’t represent a straight line. This creates situations of diminishing returns.
It makes sense when you think about it. An investment in jobs training makes a lot more sense for a high-unemployment area than a city with 100% employment.
Analysis becomes all the more important, to help identify where money should be spent to make the biggest impact in a community. Don’t adhere to a standard “same return for same dollar spent” regardless of where you are. Understand where the dollars make the most sense.
You might also have areas where certain investments will return nothing. That isn’t to say they’re necessarily bad things to spend on. It’s just that given Spera’s financial projection engine, there is a low likelihood of financial return given the variables in the system. Again, use this as a starting point – not a formal proposal.
Invest in Cities and Towns
I hope you use this information productively. It will be updated continuously, with the latest available data. And it will continue to be refined as more public and proprietary data feed its engine.
Use these data pages and calculations to come up with ideas for social impact investment in your area. Given more consistent data and proof that positive financial returns can result from these investments, they should help you form the basis for funding more programs and deals.
So what are you waiting for? Get started and dive into the possibilities today!